In just the latest in a seemingly endless stream of half-truths, Facebook has admitted it misled the public when it claimed that only 5 per cent of the users of its banned tracking app were teenagers.
The real figure, the Silicon Valley wunderkind has since confirmed to US Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), was nearly four times …

COMMENTS

Wow

So it's really worse than I thought. Especially given Facebook has blatently lied about it's activities, and appears to have been deliberately targeting children/minors, who in most jurisdictions are not capable of giving informed consent. But that's always been an issue with 'social' media and minors, ie having them agree to a contract in exchange for the service.

Re: Wow

Re: Wow

Indeed. Something has gone seriously wrong with the moral compass directing execs of these companies. So OK, the business model of a 'free' service has some fundamental problems, but the gross invasion of privacy and outright lies regarding activities looks to me like 'social' media companies are in dire need of some serious ethical cleansing.

Re: Wow

The problem is that these companies share 'second-order' business models -- business models where instead of paying for something their users get it 'for free' and the real business involves some different, second-order process, which in the case of these companies is harvesting data & selling either access to it or algorithms based on it to their real customers (for whom the business is first-order: they pay for what they get).

Second-order business models (more generally any non-first-order model) hve inherent conflicts of interest which drive people to behave in a shitty way. This, I think, has three results: people who are not initially shits are pressured to become so (I think this is what has happened to Google); people who are not shits and won't become them leave (probably all of the big internet companies); and finally people who are already loathsome shits tend to start such businesses & actively drive out the non-shits (Facebook / Zuckerberg).

One interesting thing to look at is other, older, businesses which have second-order models, to see how they have been dealt with, and how successful that has been. There's an obvious example: modern retail banking. For almost everyone banks provide accounts 'for free', providing a very useful service for no cost to the user. They then make their money elsewhere by reusing their retail customers' money &c. And there are terrible conflicts of interest involved, of course, and banks similarly attract shitty people & convert non-shitty people into shitty people. To deal with these problems retail banks are absolutely covered in legal regulations and internally have a mass of processes to enforce these regulations and try and prevent the conflicts of interest and shittiness-conversion from taking over (I've worked in a bank: banks are really frightened about the possibility of losing their licenses). And this works ... most of the time. Mostly, retail banks behave OK as a result, but sometimes they don't and sometimes they behave badly enough to destroy or badly damage the global economy. None of this is helped by regulatory capture, which is why the problems that caused 2008 didn't really get addressed I think.

So retail banking is covered in regulation and this solves the conflict-of-interest problems to an extent which is, optimistically, barely adequate. Facebook &c essentially are entirely unregulated, and actively oppose regulation on the grounds that it will suppress innovation.

There was, probably, a time when the internet businesses were small enough that regulation was possible, but they are now so large and have so effectively captured the people who run the legal frameworks in which they operate that this is not realistically possible: governments are not going to regulate the organisations they rely on for communication & propaganda, still less the ones that feed them the stream of surveillance data they masturbate over, or the stream of backhanders they need to keep themselves in drugs and prostitutes.

This is not going to turn out well: Facebook is a parasite which has avoided any meaningful regulation & will continue to lay its eggs in the body of its host until the parasite load becomes so large that the host dies and the parasite is all their is.

Re: Wow

Agreed. Facebook's judged on active users. It then tries to convert those users into advertising revenue. It's been losing it's appeal to the youth audience who see Facebook as something their parents use.

So it wants to understand the youth audience, and as it's entire business model has been built around collecting personal information, probably doesn't see anything wrong with doing that survey. Especially given the profit motive.

Meanwhile, in other areas, I suspect any behavioural scientist wanting to do the same survey/study would be expected to submit their proposal to an ethics board for a review.. Which is possibly the same standard by which Facebook and other apps should be judged on. Difference is a scientific study would probably be expected to anonymise data, but business wants to de-anonymise, link and flog ads.

Not sure what remedies there should, or could be. More people are waking up to the gross invasions of privacy, so 'social' media apps need to do something. Governments could perhaps legislate for ethical & privacy standards, and maybe force a court appointed ethics board if they can show laws have been broken.

And there's also the slight problem of FANGS, which make up a rather large percentage of the NASDAQ's 'value', and that value could plummit if users switch off.. With the knock-on effect for things like pension funds.

I also like the first/second order analogy. One huge problem I have with 'social' media is if users want to create a Facebook account, and share personal information, then fine.. As long as there's informed consent. But most of the big 'social' media business also try to hoover up personal information from other users, ie all Facebook's tracking. That is not acceptable, and trying to weasle some form of indirect consent via content sites is not ok. If I don't have a Facebook account, then what I do is none of Facebook's business.

Re: Wow

I hate to break this to you, but the people ignoring inconvenient facts in order to carry on being paid large sums are widely represented -- the overwhelming majority in fact - of human beings on the planet. The fact that you and I don't do it has more to do with opportunity than moral uprightness. "Virtue untested is no virtue at all", as someone once said. (OK of course there are some fine upstanding people who would walk away from a well-paid job with no prospect of getting more than 50% as much pay in their lives on the basis of moral principle, but there's a reason why concepts of "saints" and "heroes" strongly focus on their unusualness.

Re: Wow

Re: Wow

I wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out Google lied about those G+ API misuses. Having seen the writing on the wall for some time - you know, on account of them knowing they were doing wrong but wondering how much longer they could get away with it.

When news broke about Facebook back in March last year, Google probably went into damage control overdrive, eventually resulting in the G+ platform being shuttered.

Just a shame they couldn't be as reactive about their ads platform, which remarkably sees Google's own API's still using document.write, then having Chrome be audacious enough to complain about how it's probably not the most secure thing to be doing. Like it's somehow your fault.

Re: Wow

Lying, cheating and stealing are merely aggressive business practices. Leaving money on the table over petty ethical concerns would be the real crime to these corporate types. What the many of us seem not to have noticed is that behind the code these tech people are sharks just like the captains of industry have always been.

Re: Wow

"What the many of us seem not to have noticed is that behind the code these tech people are sharks just like the captains of industry have always been."

What amazes me is that so many people didn't catch on when they started saying things like "data is the new oil". Had everyone forgotten what the behavior of oil companies was (and is)? They were essentially declaring their intention to become evil right then and there.

Well, he's in good company

I wonder if maybe Zuck is sharpening his lying skills for a 2020 run for the Presidency..

That said, the liar in chief may be in trouble. Of all people, AOC gave the example of what you do in a hearing. In less than her allotted 5 minutes she basically set up a deep investigation into how Trump's real estate business dealt with tax, complete with names of witnesses and responsible people. She's seriously sharp.

I wonder what would happen if we could let her loose on Zuckerberg. I'd make sure I have popcorn around..

Suckers

"Half" truths?

We have all reached the tipping point, more often than we would like, when, not naturally being aggressively judgemental, we eventually realise somebody we have known for a while is a pathological liar. Or at least has a poor average when it comes to honesty.

After that you cannot believe a single thing (s)he says. Ever again.

In the business world it applies to individuals as well as corporations - a strange, anthropomorphic phenomenon, but I digress.

Au contraire - the sludge at the bottom of swamps and streams (and fish tanks) has a useful biological fuction - that's where the bacteria live that digest waste and convert it to nutrients for the surrounding environment.

Which is why I won't let my wife use the vacuum-device to clean out the gravel in the fish tank - last time she did that the water quality dramatically nosedived.. (even ignoring the 'lets not release toxins from the substrate' effect it was pretty bad and we lost a number of fish after the tank was cleaned. Even the 14" pleco was agitated and it *loves* less-than-clean water..

Hear hear! But I, and many here on El Reg’s forums, have been singing this song for a while now. It doesn’t make a difference though because the uneducated, or only partially IT literate, masses will keep on using FaceBook as always arguing:

1. Fake News. FaceBook is good.

2. It isn’t really that bad, and they’re cleaning up their act or…

3. I know it’s bad, but I only use it to stay in touch with my friends.

Until people stop making excuses for facebook, the problem will remain.

Re: Warning!

Re: Warning!

Also, (Like Google) Facebook is collecting as much data about you as they can anyway, even if you don't use their services. Some of it from web tracking, and a lot of it from buying datasets from third parties. Facebook doesn't need your friends to post information about you.

Re: Warning!

Re: Warning!

If it ever comes to the point I consider taking action against Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg or his minions, that BOLO-list won't help one bit as all my actions will be strictly within the law and using the law. It will be a lawsuit that will really hurt.

Re: Warning!

So what we have here is a sociopath who treats others as beneath him because they are products, no different than cattle. He tries to steal as much information as possible from everyone, from within his high walled, private compound on a distant island. All he needs to do is shave his head, gain 200 pounds and buy a white cat.

As scared of everyone this guy is, and thieves generally are afraid of everyone because they never know if the person they see is a victim that knows what he did, he likely has a huge security force. So, if HE were to be swatted a few times... of course, I'm posting this for the amusing thoughts this would give everyone, and CERTAINLY not to give the nuts among us any ideas...

You've got to give the Tories a point for spinning this as well as they did. When they gave ground to the Lib Dems it was them showing their softer side. When it went the other way, it was the Lib Dems breaking their promises.

Considering they weren't actually in charge (you may remember they didn't actually win the election), the Lib Dems sure took most of the blame for the results.

1. The Lib Dems thought the Tories would play nicer with them if they were in coalition together - completely overlooking the point the Tories don't even play nice among themselves (cf what's going on with Brexit at the moment and the party within a party that is the ERG seemingly intent on bringing down a Government of their own party).

2. Putting aside the various and extensive criticisms of the Tories the one thing they do very well is politics - and that's how they managed to spin things the way they did, to the detriment of the Lib Dems. People used to moan about New Labour spin doctors like Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson but they're mere amateurs compared to the Tory machine when it gets in its stride.

Il Papa Francis has zapped one Cardinal (McCarrick) and there's another one (Pell) lined up in his sights. There's only 223 Cardinals (224 before McCarrick got the boot, 222 once Pell joins him) in the world. Multiple bishops and archbishops are also zapped, about to be zapped, or 'retired' to various places; in the US and Canada, it seems that there's somewhere in Montana that is being used as a 'retirement home' for those who are... suspect... but it might be hard to prove. There are lots of cattle out in Montana, but very few choirboys. Allegedly something similar is being planned for Oz and Africa. Francis' predecessor, Benedict, is also 'retired', to a nice little place in a monastery in the Vatican where Francis can keep an eye on him. One wonders what Benedict did, one really does. Other than cover for McCarrick and Pell, of course. McCarrick and Pell were 'conservatives', and an amazing percentage of 'conservative' Cardinals have retired or just aged out; 123 of the 223 Cardinals still in the College of Cardinals can be considered for being Pope should Francis drop dead tomorrow, something a lot of 'conservatives' are praying will happen. Most of the 100 who have aged out or 'retired' or are otherwise ineligible are 'conservatives'... Retired priests have no contact with parishioners, can't perform any sacrament, and are supposed to just sit quietly and vegetate. Francis is cleaning house, slowly, to be sure, but he's cleaning house. Zuck is still shitting where he eats.

I'll be pleased if you don't speak ill of Benedict, who resigned on his own initiative and surprised even his closest advisors. It was months before Francis was even elected to the See of Peter so it most definitely could not have been his doing.

The truth is that Benedict resigned so a younger Pope could be elected to deal with the mess in IOR and certain other organizations where entities like the N'dranghetta had sunk their claws.

TL;DR: Benedict did *not* touch any boys or girls inappropriately, and implying otherwise is disgraceful on your part.

While Facebook clearly has moral issues, I'm not sure it will last the hundreds of years necessary to really destroy people lives and then have the perpetrators promoted or given the resources to setup large scale abuse systems in the way the Catholic church has over the last two millennia.

Facebook are more like a busload of Jimmy Saviles. They've entertained some, abused others and eventually we will find out the truly disgusting things they have been doing in morgues...

Dumb fscks?

One of the few times Zuckerberg has been honest was when he said he considered Facebook users to be "dumb fscks" (using Regspeak here). He might have added that Facebook's leadership are "avaricious, amoral, lying csnts".

Re: Dumb fscks?

The email exchange that was published as part of a recent Parliamentary inquiry wasn't just interesting for the actual material but also revealing of the culture within that company. The need to both monetize information and to find new sources of information to monetize means that the company sails very close to the edge of legitimacy -- it has absolutely no qualms about working in legal grey areas, it will do anything it thinks it can get away with (and has a large cash war chest to deal with situations where people do try to hold it accountable).

I have no idea whether its the exception or the rule these days. I know that a lot of the old-fashioned companies that I've worked for prided themselves on their ethical behaviour, they thought it necessary to conform to societal norms. Maybe these newer companies are just mining stored value like hedge funds except that the value they're exposing and selling is the standards of conduct in a civilized society.

Facebook and Disabled Accounts

Can someone please address the fact that FB is disabling accounts without reason? I have THOUSANDS of photos over the course of TEN YEARS that I can no longer access. The one and only "reason" I was given via an automated system was that FB couldn't verify my identity or account. AFTER TEN YEARS??!! Then you are asked to send in a government issued ID. Well, I've done that THREE times AND MAILED in hard copies to BOTH addresses that are listed online for FB. The only thing we got was a case number which says "open" and that someone will get back to us after an "investigation". Tomorrow will be THREE MONTHS since FB disabled my account!! At this point all I want is access to get my photos! The option to download while my account is disabled doesn't even work. I have contacted FB on twitter and IG also. Even friends have messaged them via FB's own page and gotten ZERO response. Can someone PLEASE help me?? Whatever is going on with FB seems to be disgusting and bordering illegal, if not outright illegal! I just want my photos back. My kids, my family, my friends...more than a decade worth of memories are basically gone.

Re: Facebook and Disabled Accounts

Re: Facebook and Disabled Accounts

Take legal action. Small claims court for the max allowed. They probably won't defend the action. Then county court and take it to the High Court and send in the Baliffs (with the press and TV present naturally)

USe the money obtained to carry on the war. Just make sure you have no assets for them to go after first though.

OR

make a complaint under the GDPR. You aren't the only one feeling f**ked by Zuck and co.

Not a FB user, never have been and never will be. All FB domains are blocked at my home firewall.

Re: Facebook and Disabled Accounts

Re: Facebook and Disabled Accounts

Point number 1... They shrink the photos when you upload them so they load quickly in the mobile app (and take up less space on the servers). The resulting photo quality is garbage. Definitely not worthy of important memories you want to view on bigger devices in the future, and definitely not good enough to print.

Point number 2... It's a free website. You are completely at its mercy. Perhaps uploading thousands of important photos there and using it as your only storage option for them was not a good idea.

Re: Facebook and Disabled Accounts

If they asked for ID then it's very straight forward.

FB ask for ID if they believe the account is a fake, or at least using a fake name. The ID is asked for to prove that you really are called "Jim WHUFC4EVA Anon" or "Stacey mummyto3 TEAM GRIFFINDOR Bloggs" etc etc etc

I don't think FB ask for ID in any other instance.

The usual way this happens is a petty argument where one user is more aware of the t's and c's than the other.

Someone with an obviously fake name pissed you off? Report the profile to FB and it's gone. Zap. Because they will never be able to produce ID that shows their name is that of their favourite fantasy character or whatever.

Anyway, TL;DR if they've asked for ID it's because the user has most likely used a fake name (something something you agreed when you signed up something something) and it's been reported or spotted by the algorithm.

I would be grateful if El Reg would stop using a photo of the Facebook head chunt in your stories about the company. We know what the chunt looks like and I try desperately to avoid looking at the ugly muthaf*cker's fisog whenever it is shown. I know its easy to skip past the top image but there's often a side story box where for a few seconds that smug-looking arseh*les face is showing. Surely there is a derogatory fb meme that could be used instead?

I try desperately to avoid looking at the ugly muthaf*cker's fisog whenever it is shown.

Should be renamed...

Faecebook because the whole place stinks like a pile of excement. The sooner he is hit with a multi billion $$$ fine and the thing closed down the better IMHO.

The moment you sign up YOU become their slave. They will collect and collate data about you, your friends and family. That is the price you pay for using antisocial media. They, Google and the rest are doing their utmost to become a real life Big Brother.

Minor pedantry: Alexa is an Amazon product. Google has a thing that is like it, called Google assistant. It's the one that does even less and constantly sounds angry at you.

Also, even when a consumer understands the "free service means you are the product" idea, they often don't understand "I bought a hardware device but the software on it still treats me badly". Another battle to be fought.

Re: Its all about trust

Re: Its all about trust

I don't even think you need to provide bank account or credit card details to receive money via Paypal. If you don't have an account already and someone sends money to your email, it gives you the option to sign up and create a Paypal account. You just need to put in your details and say your over 18 and you can then spend the funds or send them to another paypal account.

I know this because I accidentally gave the wrong email address to someone to pay me via Paypal which wasn't registered with Paypal so rather than refunding and asking them to send it again, I just went through and created an account on that email and then sent the money from that account to my actual Paypal. At no point was I required to prove any of the details I provided were genuine.

And this plays right into the ideal strategy to collect children and adolescents. They have a lot of time and nothing else. A little money seems like and possibly is a big deal to them, so they're willing to go through the effort of setting up something in order to get it. They haven't had the experience to know when they're being targeted maliciously. They don't have the technical knowledge to understand what kind of data they've just given away nor what can be done with it. I would not be surprised to hear that even more than 18% of these were adolescents; Facebook created a system virtually guaranteed to bring them all running.

Headline of the year

Wording Issue

"To imagine that providing a single email address comprises written parental consent is so laughable it is incredible that Facebook ever dared to suggest otherwise." Otherwise than that it does comprise consent, as it would tend to be read initially, or otherwise than that it is laughable, which would be consistent? I hope you see what I'm getting at: people are more used to reading sentences like "That providing a single email address does not comprise written parental consent is so obvious, it is incredible that Facebook ever dared to suggest otherwise." A is so B, it is C that X suggested... A, or not A, but not A is B or not A is B. So also possible is "That providing a single address comprises written parental consent is so laughable it is incredible that Facebook ever dared to suggest such a thing."

Re: It seems lying is hard coded into Facebook’s DNA

Re: It seems lying is hard coded into Facebook’s DNA

Eventually, I expect the shareholders will expect Zuckerberg to go

They'll have a probelm since he directly controls more than 50% of the voting stock. It would take legal action by the US Government to force him to step down - at which point (under more ethical management) Facebook would wither and die.

Welcome to the modern world

Nothing is illegal unless you get caught - and then you just say sorry and walk away. Facebook will suffer no penalties for breaking the law - hardly anyone does these days, you just move on to the next project/victim. Unless of course you are poor - then you pay the price - poor people should know better, rich people/corporations just have to apologise for making innocent mistakes.

Time to speak up?

Of course any of us can block FB, but it seems to me time that anyone, start going further: NOT using or linking to FB at all, explaining briefly why to any and all invitations to use FB and doing our best to quietly persuade others to follow suit.

Yes, it will sometimes be inconvenient, and sometimes lose revenue.

Some will regard it as insane, or pointless, or extremist.

But out of everyone, we are among the people best placed to understand how corrosively damaging FB is.

Over the line?

This article is fantastic- well written, informative, highlighting many points of serious concern over Facebook’s dubious governance and “move fast and break things” culture.

I certainly share your anger over Facebook and I’m a big fan of Register’s caustic aesthetic; but feel that you’ve stepped over the line through the use of insults (e.g. “moron”) and swearing (e.g. “fscking”).

I did initially tweet a link to this article; but on reflection felt compelled to delete it because of the insults and swearing- which is a shame because I agree with your reasoning and sentiment.

Russians Crack Facebook&

Does anyone want to fuck FB? The Winklevoss brothers acquired enough capital to hire a “brain” in the field of guerrilla wars. And now the campaign has decided to make some extra money on the pamping of FB shares. It seems like everything is the same. If Durov syncs with them. Hmm, a lot of interesting things can come out. Let's wait, we'll see.

It is necessary to add a little HYIP, so that the sugar boy will lose the trust of the authorities through the discontent of the masses. And then divide and conquer. Need still have a little digging.

PS: Year 2030, the yellow press of the US is replete with the headlines "Russia bombed Facebook."=))